Yesterday morning, during my training I was doing side-to-side box jump shuffles, and fell onto my left ankle with a visceral SNAP. I saw and felt my foot go perpendicular to the ground, and I rolled over reeling in pain. Needless to say, that was the end of leg day.

Today I was able to see a doctor and get an x-ray done on my ankle. Luckily, nothing was broken in my foot, but it was diagnosed rather as a very sever sprain. It was so severe that you could see bruising on the inside of my left foot.

After I happily hobbled back home (and driving a stick shift car is CRAZY with a sprained left ankle), I took a moment to think about my experience at the x-ray facility. At this place, there were about 20 other patients, all calmly waiting to get their insides photographed. As I waited in the room, I watched people come to the reception with various different reasons. One was a (probable) lung cancer patient waiting for a chest x-ray, pre-surgery. Another was there for a dislocated shoulder. Another was there for a full-body MRI (these are scary cuz you have to lay there for 20 minutes in a loud machine). There were a handful of others, mostly in their senior years, there and very miserable looking, obviously sent here for a grave reason by their doctors. From what it seemed like, my little ankle sprain was child’s play compared to the horrors of what some of these folks would find in their x-rays.

The attendant had called me back into the staging area for my x-ray. It was while I was waiting here that a friend had posted an item on FB about a church couple who was recently going through end-of-life hospice care from a terminal cancer diagnosis. It was a young couple, seemingly in their 30’s or early 40’s. But the end was near, and there was an online campaign to raise money for their end-of-life expenses. This made me truly sad while I was waiting to get my ankle x-ray. Earlier this week, I received word that a brother’s father had just passed away. Then on FB again, an old friend whose mother also passed away.

Two deaths, and an imminent one coming soon. The year of 2016 has seen its fair share of death, both in the public and my own private eye.

Death seems to surround me these days, amongst many of my friends. It made me think about my own mortality, and that of my parents, who are pushing 70 now. While I trust they’ll live a few more decades hopefully, I know the day is coming where I’ll be grieving their deaths someday. I guess I’ve finally come to that age where disease and old age generally run their course amongst those we love.

It made me think that old age is very expensive. It costs a lot to get those x-rays and see multiple doctors. The treatments aren’t cheap either. I immediately thought that I needed to get ready for these inevitable scenarios – but then remembered that these scenarios are just that – inevitable. One can never truly be ready for them. When it happens, it happens. One can only hope they’ve lived a life truly worth their time on this earth when it does.

It’s a sad thing that it takes the contemplation of death for one to be prompted to evaluate their own purpose in life. Yet that’s the selfish beings we all are. Many of us live without any such deliberate purpose, just going with the flow, just doing the motions of life. And one day, we find ourselves in an x-ray facility nervously awaiting the picture.

Today was a great reminder for me to try my best to live with this deliberate purpose. Kinda painful way to get this reminder, but hell, I’ll take it!